


in the changing of the moon

by voodoochild



Category: Boardwalk Empire
Genre: Body Paint, Multi, Open Marriage, Painting, Threesome - F/M/M, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-28 16:37:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/309860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voodoochild/pseuds/voodoochild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's an art to Jimmy, Richard, and Angela, a balance. (Set in an alternate universe where 2.10 doesn't happen.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	in the changing of the moon

**Author's Note:**

> Written for thatyourefuse for the [Boardwalk Empire Comment Ficathon](http://cloudytea.livejournal.com/139537.html), for the prompt _"This lightning's fine/She picks up these tired parts of mine/Who's carrying you tonight?/Every now and then baby, ain't it good to be alive?"_. Title from Damien Rice's "Unplayed Piano".

_Waxing (Jimmy)_

The art thing is something they share.

Whether it's Ange with paint smudges across her cheeks and a brand new canvas in the den or the charcoal and glue on Richard's fingers from whatever he's working on, it's a language they both speak fluently. They'll whisper in shorthand ("your perspective . . . I like it" "Richard, the horizon's all wrong" "no, look closer, the light is good") and try as he might, he just can't understand them.

Ange's paintings are pretty, sure, but he doesn't see them the way Richard does. Richard studies them, steps back to get the "effect", or whatever Ange calls it, and can tell her when something's wrong without hurting her feelings. Jimmy says the wrong words, messes it up somehow, but Angela just shakes her head at him and Richard says he'll learn.

Sometimes Ange likes to draw one or both of them. Little sketches in the margins of her book, full-page stills, even a canvas once. Jimmy doesn't mind modeling - he's usually too fucked-out to argue - and even though it had surprised him that Richard allowed Angela to draw him when he didn't have his mask on, the portrait in Richard's room bears all of Angela's hallmarks.

They'd just gotten in after a night out - just Jimmy and Angela, Richard having agreed to watch Tommy - and their son is sound asleep in his bed. Richard's on the porch, his long frame stretched across the chaise, just as unconscious as Tommy. His gun is still dangling from his fingers, mask lying on the table, and Angela stops Jimmy in his tracks before he wakes Richard up.

She digs out a sketchpad and pencil from her bag, and silently begins to sketch Richard. At first, it looks terrible, all bold lines and strange crosshatch patterns, but then Jimmy sees familiar details emerge.

The endless stretch of Richard's legs. His obsessively-knotted tie. The faint shadow of stubble at his jaw. That piece of hair that never stays slicked-back.

Angela is beautiful when she paints, all softness in her body and shine in her eyes. She comes alive, the way she does in their arms, and Jimmy can't help it, has to warm himself in her brightness.

"Tell me, Ange," he whispers. "What are you seeing?"

She doesn't look at him, but he can see her shiver. "You know that stillness, before a storm? Or a lion just before it attacks?"

"Yeah?"

"That's what I think of when I see him like this. The possibility of violence, contained for a short while. But more than that, Jimmy - look at the way his hand is."

He sees it, this time, and it's a gutpunch of _wantwantwant_. Richard's fingers, wrapped around his gun, calloused from use. The way his index finger is just shy of the trigger, could thumb the safety aside with a flick. The promise inherent in that - _this house and these people are mine to protect, and you will not have them_.

Jimmy slides behind Angela, resting his chin on her shoulder and his hands on her hips. "He can't help it. It's what he was trained for, even more than me. Can't shut it off."

More details from the scratch of her pencil: the shading of his vest against the white of his shirt, the curve of his bottom lip as it stretches up to the scarred side of his face, the jut of his hipbone peeking between the fabric of his trousers and the stiffness of his shirt. The parts adding up to the impossible whole.

Angela arches into his hands, her bottom rubbing against him in an implicit promise. Her breath comes in that ringing gasp, but she doesn't take her eyes off Richard.

"Would you want him to?"

Never.

~~~

 _Full (Richard)_

It's the focus that sometimes scares him.

He had never been comfortable with attention - the effect of an isolated childhood combined with a natural quiet demeanor only enhanced by the war and his injuries - had never understood why some people sought it. He hadn't even known what he was agreeing to when he let Angela sketch him, just that she looked _alive_ when she talked about art, and that she had never openly stared at him before. It was as if the mask didn't even interest her, and he did.

And so he'd let her draw him. Let her look her fill, study each and every inch of his ruined face, and when she was finished, she even looked sad that he would put his mask back on.

(Jimmy was different. Jimmy had looked at him with nothing but trust and admiration from that moment in the hospital, and Richard can't ask for anything more than that.)

The first time they were . . . together, it had been dark, and Richard had whispered a prayer of thanks. You cannot fear what you cannot see, and human beings forget about imperfections so easily when they aren't faced with them. He had relied on touch, could now map Angela's curves and Jimmy's angles blind if he had to.

He's better now. Now, as Jimmy presses into him and Angela tightens around him, daylight blazing around them, he likes the clarity. Mere inches separate him from the delight in Angela's eyes, the way she bites her lip when he pulls out slow, and breaks into sobs as Jimmy's hand reaches between them to flicker over her clit. And if he cared to, he could turn, catch Jimmy's lips with his while he relishes the tight grip Jimmy has around his waist.

It's hard to reconcile the wreck he was after the war with the man he is now. Jimmy and Angela, each in their own way, have rebuilt him piece by piece, and it's more than Richard feels he deserves.

But it's hard to feel like a monster when he has something so pure as this.

Angela says things in words. Commitment. Fidelity. Compassion. Loyalty. Love. She explains and she questions and she tells him she loves him every day. She's teaching him a new language, one he wants to memorize the way he's memorized the little gasp she gives when she comes and the perfect angle of his cock inside her to make her scream.

Jimmy says things in actions. He catches Richard's eye and nods and it means "let's go to work". He pours Richard a drink and it means "listen to me". His hand to the back of Richard's head is "I love you" and has been ever since that day in the woods. The slow slide of his fingers inside Richard and the bruises he leaves on Richard's hips mean "I need you", and that's all right, because Richard needs him too.

Richard knows what it feels like to have everything, now.

~~~

 _Waning (Angela)_

"Stop trying to look, Ange," Jimmy chides.

It's almost perfect; Richard's cool, slick fingers tracing over her skin, Jimmy's hands warm over her eyes. The paint spreads across her, easier than canvas, and had she known she could get Richard to indulge his artistic side, she'd have stripped down and offered long ago.

She tries not to shiver, really she does, because she knows it'll mess up his lines, but _god_. The pulse-jumping hesitation as he changes colors or considers where to place the next streak of color. How sound and touch are heightened, making her startle at the crash of the ocean, gasp at the lightest brush of fingers or lips. Jimmy's legs pinning her down and open, his hushed voice in her ear.

"C'mon, put your hands on the bed. Try not to move."

"I'm trying," she says, grabbing fistfuls of the sheets.

Richard gives a low hum of appreciation. "Good. Almost there."

Chill, smooth paint - shadowing first under her breasts, then stroking in quick, staccato touches down her sides. Richard's breath warm on her skin, blowing to dry it more quickly. She moans, trying not to shift, and Jimmy kisses her temple.

"Tell me what it looks like," she begs.

Jimmy shakes his head against her and Richard taps an admonition into her belly. "Not yet," he rumbles, "not until I finish."

And then it begins again, teasing aching half-meant touches, her body turned into a mess of nerves. Jimmy has to shift, lock his legs around hers because she's arching so hard against him. Richard presses calming hands to her hips, paint mixing slippery with her sweat, thumbs stroking the point of her hipbones.

"Just a little more," Richard says. "Then you can look."

She loves his calm, his precision. Jimmy has always been all boundless energy and drive, wanting _more, more, now, now, now_ , and sometimes, it's nice to focus. Be quiet and still and enjoy the feeling of someone you love and trust doing something that makes him happy. It would never have occurred to Jimmy to do something like this, but Richard's different.

Richard calms Jimmy in a way she never could. And she could be resentful, angry, at the implication that she's inadequate, but a postcard from Paris she keeps in the drawer and a stolen kiss under Chinese lanterns remind her that there are things that neither of them can do for her, either.

Richard's hands return; he must have smeared his entire hands in the paint, because they press solid sweeping lines up her rib cage and out to her sides. Again and again, then an agonizing absence (she _keens_ , Jimmy murmuring against her hair, hands solid against her eyes) until it's just two fingers outlining something over her breast.

Her heart, she realizes. He's drawn her heart.


End file.
